If you can’t seem to stop stressing about the work you have to do, try this technique courtesy of study skills author Cal Newport: change the due dates of all your papers, projects and even exams to at least one day earlier. Then treat your new deadline as if it were the real deadline.
The obvious benefit here is that you’ll finish earlier. The deeper benefits, as Newport points out, are:
1. You’ll avoid ever feeling time pressure.
2. When you see your friends scrambling at the last minute to meet the deadlines for tasks you’ve already finished, you’ll feel like the master of your own academic universe.
This is exactly what we do with our seniors’ college application deadlines at Collegewise. We ignore the real deadlines and set our own. Our students finish months before all of their friends. And that’s what our Collegewise kids—and their parents—seem to be most thankful for. Finishing early eliminates stress.
It takes discipline to do it. But the results are well worth it.
You can read Cal’s full post on the “retreating deadline method” here.